June 20, 2018
We see increasingly frequent occurrence of natural disasters. Scientists relate this with global warming, “nervous climate”, while conspiracy theorists are sure that its all the fault of a climate weapon. Where is the limit between the truth and speculation?
Talks about some climatic, or take broader, geophysical weapon, are not ungrounded, and the issue itself needs serious attention. By the middle of 20 century, scholars made serious progress in changing atmospheric and other natural processes and discovered a source of unprecedented force – nuclear reactions. People now had a possibility of impacting the environment, and not with benevolent intentions. And if a climatic weapon had been made, it would have caused a lot of grief to humanity.
The latter have always tried to be less independent upon climate and weather, control the natural elements, and direct them towards their own favour. Pagans used ritual and magicians for this. These rituals, as we are aware, a still practiced – for instance, in Africa. But beliefs are one thing, and science is different. Observant people have noticed that after heavy forest fires, it often rains. Precipitation always followed artillery engagements. Later, experiments showed that the water vapour contained in the air, it turned into cloud drops owing to the condensation centres or nuclei.
These report to the atmosphere from different sources. Marine salt crystals get into the air with marine water splashes. Nitric acid drops are formed at lightings and forest fires. Fires and furnace chimneys emit smoke particles to the air, and sulphuric acid salts – sulphates, wind sweeps soil particles from the earth surface. And water drops and ice crystals are accumulated on these very particles.
Precipitation often occurs from mixed clouds, which consist of both water drops and ice particles. And condensation and freezing of drops (crystallisation) and water drops crystallisation (sublimation) occur simultaneously, various types of precipitation falls subject to the ratio of these processes. For instance, hail is formed at intensive growth of ice particles in a cumulo-nimbus.
The very discovery of the mechanism of cloud and precipitation formation became basis for methods of impact to the environment. Through experiments to practical implementation, their possibility was proven, and are successfully used in various countries and fields of economy. From ancient times, we have evidences of many attempts to cause rain. Mere liars, swindlers, strange people, and absorbed researchers worked on this issue. Some raised gunpowder charges on aerostats, some others made up chemical mixtures to be burned in large furnaces, while others tried to warm up the air using large fires/flames. One of the most notorious “rain sellers” was Charles Hatfield from America. He became so famous that managed to sign a contract to fill the San Diego water dam with rainwater. He is said to have saved Italy from draught in 1922.
In the middle of 20 century impacting to the weather was scientifically grounded, experiments were conducted and methods of causing precipitation, spreading of fogs, addressing hail were developed. Large scale research works were conducted in the USSR, USA and other countries. The cause of precipitation control is very simple: to prevent precipitation fall in one territory, it is necessary to cause in somewhere else. Artificial condensation nuclei are used as active substance (generally, it is iodine silver or iodine lead) and refrigeration agents (solid carbon acid). Airplanes or canon guns are used to seed clouds with reagents. Drop formation and enlargement processes are accelerated, which results in start of precipitation. The same technology is used to artificial growth of precipitation amounts.
An efficient and well-organised system fighting hail was developed in the Soviet Union. Today, the Federal Agency of Russia for Hydrometeorology and monitoring of the environment (Rosgidromet) continues work in this field. There are specialised military departments of the hydrometeo-services in southern regions of the country, where hail annually causes serious damage to the agriculture, they are equipped with special missile units for delivery of reagents to the hail clouds. Only one charge launched to a cloud delivers trillions of reagent particles, which become additional crystallisation nuclei. Competing with natural hail embryos, they take over part of the water from the cloud. As a result, the ice particles do not reach large sizes and fall onto the earth. On the way, the often have enough time to melt turning into rain.
Many countries like Russia, the USA, France, Australia, Syria, Iran and others are successfully regulating precipitation events. For this purpose, the Rosgidromet has a special plane-laboratory on YAK-42 plane base; similar airplanes are used in other countries. An important feature of the described methods should be noted: precipitation may be caused or prevented only in a limited territory, i.e. locally. In addition, the water balance is not disturbed, and to drive clouds away from a city is possible only by pouring rain on its suburbs. From recent history we know a fact that some Arab countries used artificial rise of precipitation methods, which caused deficit of rain in neighbouring countries. Military people could not have ignored such sufficiently efficient technologies, and history is aware of cases of use of meteorological weapons. We are talking about the “Operation Popeye”, used by the United States during Vietnam was from 1967 to 1972. American planes dusted clouds with iodine silver during rain seasons and the precipitation intensity would triple in comparison with normal rates. As a result, rice fields and roads, also the Ho Shi Min’s partisan path were washed away,
However, the weather on large territories is subject to processes of larger, synoptic scales, i.e. from movement of atmospheric vortexes – cyclones and anticyclones, air masses with various properties, and from atmospheric fronts that separated them. Large amounts of energy and funds are required for interfering into such events. For instance, energy of one cyclone is comparable to the power of several nuclear bombs. Now no county in the world has enough resources and technology for such large scale impact to the atmosphere.
Though control of nuclear energy in its time inspired great expectations to military and politicians-militarists. In addition to direct nuclear attacks to the rival, the nuclear weapon could serve an instrument for impacting natural processes for the purposes of causing such natural calamities like earthquakes, tsunami, and floods. Experimental nuclear explosions in different media were conducted in both the USA and Soviet Union. But the testing results did not prove to be promising. At the same time, growing accumulation of nuclear weapons caused concerns of scholars. According to their calculations, the result of a large-scale nuclear war could be occurrence of nuclear winter. Dust from multiple fires would cause sharp reduction of solar energy inflow to the Earth surface. This would lead to cooling of the atmosphere for many years. This is the real climatic weapon against our planet!
Many research works were conducted and some are still underway to try to model a nuclear winter. Scholars use more and more sophisticated models of the climatic system of the Earth and more powerful computers. We should note that the specialists are not all in one view in assessment of geophysical consequences of a nuclear war, but we can say one thing for sure: it will end up with a serious catastrophe for humanity and cause unrecoverable damage to the natural environment. And finally, the humanity realised the extent and consequences of creating a climatic weapon. In 1977, at an initiative of the USSR, an international convention No 2692 “Environmental Modification Convention" (ENMOD) was adopted. Of course, this agreement does not guarantee that some country would stop research, testing, and even use of a climatic weapon. For finding out the use of such technologies would be sufficiently difficult: this would require availability of a developed monitoring system that generates maximum detailed information about the status of the environment.
So, it is really difficult to stop the conspiracy theorists from discussing a climatic weapon. Internet contains an ample amount of information about some secret technologies of meteorological wars. At the same time the nature itself offers interest to the issue, however strange it can be, by delivering disasters after disasters to the humanity: the Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruption in Iceland, Irma, Katrina hurricanes, anomalous heat in 2010 in European Russia, earthquakes, floods, tsunami… it is so convenient to explain all this by use of a climatic weapon, which would be quite natural in the era of global confrontation of political forces.
it is said the various types of climatic weapons were “invented”: creation of artificial ozone hole, change of the earth axis tilt etc. The American HAARP (High Altitude Aurora research Program) is presented is one the serious bogeymen stories. Within this program, the world most powerful set of radio transmitters was built in Alaska during 1997 and 2007. This facility is intended for impacting the Earth ionosphere. Both military and peaceful trend researches were conducted in this facility.
All sorts of rumours are spread about this facility. They impose to it capabilities of ruining the communication and electronic equipment, causing natural and man-caused catastrophes and even impact to human psycho at a distance. All this is allegedly done through creation of plasmoides formation in the ionosphere, which serve for directed reflection of energy flows and radiation (but, there is a similar project, we should say, in Russia – this is the “Sura” facility in Nizhny Novgorod oblast).
In response, our specialists say that impact of the radio-transmitter facility to the ionosphere cannot be compared with the amount of energy, which it receives from the Sun. Contemporary science does not have any evidence that such little disturbances in the ionosphere are capable of notably changing the condition of the lower layer of the atmosphere – troposphere, which is the “kitchen of the weather”.
The scholars have not yet completely understood the entire sophisticated multitude of interrelated processes that occur in earth layers to then achieve desired results by way of small, targeted impacts. In a number of researches, it is assumed to find existence of such mechanisms that play the role of triggers. However, the science has not gone too far in this regard.
There is something else. It is obvious that the country, who may find he way to control the technology of large scale impact to the weather and climate, would primarily would try to prevent occurrence of any natural calamities in their own territories, and we do not observe this at the moment. Nevertheless, researches are underway, and the humanity, indubitably, will achieve serious success in weather control. How people will use it – we don’t yet know.
Translated into English by Muhiddin Ganiev
Source: https://naked-science.ru/article/column/klimaticheskoe-oruzhie-mify-i